Mailman - Hardcover

Lennon, J. Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393057313 ISBN 13: 9780393057317

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 2003

Synopsis

A black comic novel chronicles the odyssey of Albert Lippincott, a neurotic, mailman and resident of Nestor, New York, whose efficiency hides his penchant for reading other people's mail, nervous breakdown, disastrous marriage and troubled, sexually ambiguous relationship with his sister. 25,000 first printing. First serial, Granta.

About this title

About the Author

J. Robert Lennon is the author of three previous novels. His stories have appeared in McSweeney's and The New Yorker.

From Publishers Weekly

From one perspective, mail can be seen as merely the humble ebb and flow of letters, bills and advertisements. From another perspective, it is the cosmic principle of life itself: "Every datum is addressed with the name of its beloved: the pheromone finds its receptor, the dog roots out its bone, the sentence seeks the period at its end: and it is all mail." Lennon's protagonist, Mailman, aka Albert Lippincott, oscillates between this postal version of the sublime and the ridiculous. The novel unfolds from June 2, 2000, when someone on Albert's mail route, Jared Sprain, in Nestor, N.Y., commits suicide. On that night, Albert is caught by one of Jared's neighbors delivering a letter to Jared's box. The neighbor thinks there is something irregular about Albert's activities, and she is right: his dirty secret is that he reads, copies and sometimes doesn't deliver his mail. She apparently reports him, for Albert is suddenly taken in by Post Office inspectors for interrogation. After he is released pending further investigation, he skips town, heading vaguely for his retired parents' place in Florida. Lennon (The Funnies, etc.) lays out Albert's life in big blocks of introspections and reminiscences. Albert harbors a semiconscious sexual longing for his sister, Gillian, who is an actress; retains violent memories of his mother, a slutty singer, and more pathetic memories of his father, a chemist. Albert is sensitive to odors, subject to mental dissonance, angry, and feels alternately trapped and comforted by his routines. He's both Everyman and Nobody. As with one of Chuck Close's blown-up photo-realistic portraits, we feel both confronted and fascinated by Albert's sheer materiality. This is an intermittently brilliant text-with long, maddeningly tedious patches-and will surely be much noted this fall.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0393057313
• ISBN 13: 9780393057317
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 483